Click Fraud - New York Times

It would appear that pay to click fraud is getting some serious attention these days. Here is another article in the New York Times that appeared over the weekend...

Full Article

A few interesting things I found in the article...

1. One of the best way to defend against it is to measure conversions against ad dollars.
2. This is very difficult for small businesses to do.
3. The only sure way to defend is to audit your click stream data for accuracy.

I also found it interesting that the article pointed out doing the above (with the exception of 1) is extremely time consuming and difficult for small businesses that are already overwhelmed with search engine marketing. The other option they had was to hire expensive search engine marketing firms to monitor and track this information for them, which might be as expensive as the fraud itself.

There is another option that didn't seem to make it into the article...EDUCATION! If you understand how SEO and Pay to Click marketing works and how that works with an overall web marketing strategy you might be able to do this more effectively for your business. I offer a number of seminars on web marketing and SEO where these small businesses can come and learn.

I suggest those of you that own small businesses consider getting a group together for me to come and speak or have your professional associations call me to come and speak at an annual conference for your group. Also by all means check my web site article and position papers areas reguarly as I will be posting articles of interest for free there that will help educate small and medium business owners on these topics. I also publish an Internet marketing newsletter for the best price on the Internet, anywhere...free.

Remember the best offense is a good defense and knowing how to defend your business from this will come from a solid understanding of web marketing and its associated topics.

Michael Temple